{
  "id": "2005-septemberoctober-immigrants-deadly-rides",
  "slug": "2005-septemberoctober-immigrants-deadly-rides",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2005-septemberoctober-immigrants-deadly-rides.html",
  "year": 2005,
  "month": "September/October",
  "monthNum": 9,
  "headline": "Immigrants' deadly rides",
  "kicker": "WORKPLACE",
  "author_name": "Mike Schneider",
  "author_title": "Reporter",
  "affiliation": "The Associated Press",
  "summary": "Farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida, face hazardous transportation conditions while traveling to work, raising concerns over state regulation and safety in agricultural labor.",
  "keywords": [
    "farmworkers",
    "transportation",
    "safety"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Public Safety",
    "Agriculture & Land"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Excel"
  ],
  "full_text": "The early morning fog and darkness were still two hours from lifting, but already the parking lot of the La Mexicana grocery store in the farming community of Immokalee, Fla., was packed with 200 farmworkers waiting to be picked up for a day of harvesting in southwest Florida's orange and vegetable groves. Creaky buses that looked two decades old pulled up. Some farmworkers jumped into the back of U-Haul trucks that were then pulled closed, shutting out fresh air. Others jumped into vans that had their seats pulled out to make room for more people. Most of these vehicles belonged to third-party labor contractors who were hired by growers to put together work crews. The contractors were licensed and monitored by federal and state agencies, but neither seemed to be doing a good job in the area of transportation based on a cursory look at the vehicles. Transportation is a central determinant in the lives of farmworkers because it is difficult for many to get driver's licenses because of their illegal status. Without driver's licenses or cars, the farmworkers in Immokalee are forced to live in substandard housing within blocks of La Mexicana so they can walk to the parking lot where the contractors pick them up for jobs. With this captive audience, the grocers and landlords in the area charge more for food and housing than in other surrounding communities. Transportation, I would find during my research, also is the No. 1 cause of death for Florida's farmworkers. Curious about how well the state regulated contractors, I asked the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation for its database about violations of state labor law made by Florida labor contractors since 1997. They didn't have one, even though Florida has one of the nation's largest farmworker populations. Those paper records were gathered in rubber bands in cardboard boxes at the state agency's headquarters in Tallahassee. So I created a database. I drove to Tallahassee, laptop computer in hand, with the expectation it would take me two days to enter the records into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet where I could look for patterns, find the worst offenders and glean other information. After several weeks of data entry during spare moments, I finally had 878 entries, covering all types of violations, that spanned January 1997 to March 2004. The database revealed that more than one-third of the farm labor violations were related to transportation, such as using vehicles that had not been inspected by the state, lacking driver's insurance or employing an unlicensed driver. State regulators had not taken transportation violations as seriously as others, such as failing to pay delinquent taxes, something which often led to a contractor's license being revoked. Not one contractor had a license revoked for a driving-related violation, even though those violations could have deadly consequences. Repeat violators of farm labor transportation laws still got their contractor licenses renewed. While I was putting the database together, tragedy struck. A van jammed with 19 farmworkers rolled over on Interstate 95 near Florida's Atlantic coast, killing nine men. Almost everyone was ejected because nobody wore seatbelts, and bodies were scattered on the highway. About the same time, the Florida Legislature, at the urging of Gov. Jeb Bush, passed legislation increasing the fines for farm labor law violations and making it easier to report violations. The law was created in response to a handful of recent cases involving farmworkers made to work in slave-like conditions. The law, however, ignored transportation-related issues.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "pre-v2",
    "extracted_at": "",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "1999-januaryfebruary-transportation-sites",
      "score": 0.231
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  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2005-septemberoctober-immigrants-deadly-rides.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2005-septemberoctober-immigrants-deadly-rides.json"
}